


Deal with the Devil

by luulapants



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Music, Oral Sex, POV Peter Hale, Peter pretends to not be a sap but he really really is, Post-Canon, Steter Secret Santa, Steter Secret Santa 2020, Stiles Stilinski Has ADHD, Stiles Stilinski has no concept of boundaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:55:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28210515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luulapants/pseuds/luulapants
Summary: After getting in over his head with magic, Stiles comes to Peter for help. They find a mutually beneficial arrangement. Featuring research binges, bad dancing, and a bit of light breaking and entering.
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 74
Kudos: 501





	Deal with the Devil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asarcasticwitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asarcasticwitch/gifts).



> For the lovely asarcastic witch for Steter Secret Santa 2020. Seeing your comments on my fics always makes me so happy, and I was SO excited to see you as my Secret Santa recipient. I hope you like it!!

A vague, unsettling feeling drew Peter from his sleep. He’d been dreaming about the hospital again. Nothing terrible, not a nightmare. Just the sense of being there, immobile, hallucinating shapes on the insides of his own eyelids while he listened to the chatter of the nurses. It faded away from him without a fight. He opened his eyes.

“ _Jesus_ Christ!” he yelped, scrambling to sit up and put some distance between himself and the wide, staring eyes of one Stiles Stilinski. “Stiles! What the hell are you doing!”

Stiles was chewing gum, peering curiously at Peter like he were an exhibit in a zoo. “Huh. I guess I never really thought about you sleeping,” he said. “Y’know, like a normal person. Maybe upside-down like a bat or something.”

Peter glared at him, incredulous. “ _Why_ are you in my room?” he demanded. “How did you get into my apartment? How do you even know where my apartment is!”

“I had Danny trace one of your credit cards to this address.” Stiles leaned back on his hands, kicking his feet up onto the bed in Peter’s direction. His socks had little snowflakes on them. Who the fuck broke into someone’s home and then _took their shoes off_? “Actually,” he continued, “first he tried to trace it through your voter registration, but _someone_ hasn’t been doing their civic duty. Do we need to have a talk about the importance of political activism?” Stiles’s teasing expression dropped into a frown. “Unless you’re a Republican. Ugh, gross, you actually might be. I bet you have a hard-on for Ronald Reagan or something.”

Gaping at the lunatic in his bed, Peter struggled to formulate a response, but it was rather difficult to keep track of Stiles’s ever-wandering trains of thought.

“Anyway, I copied your keys a while ago, so don’t worry about the lock.”

“Oh, that’s so comforting,” Peter snapped. “ _Why are you here_?”

Stiles snapped his gum.

Peter thought about snapping his neck.

“Need your help with something,” Stiles said, an edge of wariness under his show of flippancy.

Having had quite enough of sitting in bed with his home intruder, Peter got out of bed. “And you thought that stalking me and breaking into my apartment was the way to go about getting my help?” He went to his dresser. Judging by the sunlight pouring through his window, he had slept a little later than usual. The windows in his bedroom faced south. In the winter, the sun was so low in the sky that, by ten in the morning, it was like a floodlight, obnoxiously bright.

Stiles flopped around about as gracefully as a newborn octopus and crawled across the bed toward Peter in a sprawl of flannel and denim. “It’s just that it’s sort of an emergency,” he explained. “Of the magical sort.”

“So go to Deaton,” Peter sighed.

“So but here’s the thing.” When Peter glanced over, Stiles was lying on his stomach, sprawled sideways across his bed with his fingers steepled together in a pragmatic sort of gesture. “You know how Deaton has all those, like… _ethics_? And stuff? About how things should be balanced and magic should be used responsibly? I mean, it just seems to me like you have a more…” Stiles circled a finger on the sheets, lips twisted up as he searched for a word. “...a more _open-minded_ approach.”

Peter tugged his pajama shirt off over his head and pulled on a henley from the top drawer of his dresser. “Open-minded,” he echoed, wondering what in the hell this idiot had gotten himself into.

“What with the self-resurrecting!” Stiles exclaimed, pushing himself to sit up on the edge of the bed. “We know about this magic stuff, we can _do_ stuff – so what if we do a little something for ourselves every now and then, right?”

He tried to think about the most likely ways that Stiles would misuse magic for his own benefit. Ten years ago, his first guess would have been something to do with his pathetic crush on Lydia. Stiles had matured a bit since then, but perhaps not so much. “Tell me you didn’t try a love spell,” Peter sighed. He retrieved a clean pair of briefs from his dresser. With his back turned, he shed his pajama pants.

“Wha – I – um,” Stiles stammered. “No! No, it wasn’t that.”

Peter pulled the briefs on and turned around again. He took in the bright red flush on Stiles’s cheeks, the way he had averted his gaze toward the foot of the bed. Peter snorted. “For god’s sake, Stiles. If you bought one of those stupid male enhancement spells, you can relax. They’re all a scam, but they’re not actively harmful to anything but your wallet.”

“What!” Stiles squawked. He looked at Peter again, eyes wide and scandalized. “No! I didn’t – why – have _you_ bought a male enhancement spell?”

Placing his hands on his hips and well aware of how little his underwear concealed, Peter assured him with a smile, “I am quite satisfied with my current proportions.” He winked and went back to his dresser for a pair of pants.

Stiles sputtered uselessly for another moment, and then Peter heard his feet hit the ground and approach from behind. “Just...” He stepped up beside Peter and yanked up the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Look,” he said, thrusting it forward.

There, on his forearm, was a tattoo of unfamiliar writing, twisting around in a spiral of three bands. It was a smoky sort of black color, solid enough but also giving the impression that it existed independent of the skin, rather than being embedded into it. Peter grabbed Stiles by the wrist and pulled his arm closer to inspect the letters. A few looked familiar, and it took him a moment to place them.

He lifted his head and glared at Stiles disbelievingly.

“This is a brand,” he said. “A demonic brand.”

Stiles gave a miserable little whine. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

“What did you _do?_ ”

Gesturing wildly with his free arm, Stiles insisted, “It was supposed to be a simple prosperity invocation! To bring me, like, success in business and maybe get me a promotion. You know, so I can afford something better than the shit-hole apartment I’m in. I’d _really_ like to get the fuck out of there. And maybe get my dickhead boss fired while we were at it. Maybe give me prospects on some sort of romantic situation. Someone who isn’t looking to get married, like, tomorrow, but who isn’t _completely_ allergic to commitment. And just, you know, improve the overall trajectory of my life.”

“Oh, is that all?” Peter growled.

“Yeah.”

“Do the words ‘focused intention’ mean _anything_ to you?”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “So I maybe sprawled a little on the focus.”

Great. The brat skipped his Adderall before practicing black magic and somehow managed to bind himself to a demon. Peter yanked on a pair of jeans, then headed out of the room to the kitchen.

“So what do you say?” Stiles demanded, chasing after him.

Peter rolled his eyes. “The words ‘not my problem’ come to mind.” He grabbed the kettle off the stove to fill it in the sink.

Stiles, apparently as ignorant of the concept of personal space as he was all other types of boundaries, stood close at his elbow. “Come on, _please_ help me. I’ll owe you! I’ll back you up the next time Derek wants to throw you out of the pack. I’ll give you an hour unsupervised with the police database. Hell, I’ll blow you if that’s what you’re after. Just _please_ help me get rid of this thing.”

“I don’t know if I should be amused or concerned that you think your blow jobs are equally priced with access to a police database,” Peter said, shouldering him out of the way as he went back to the stove.

“I’m gonna be honest, I’m not sure which way that comment is going,” Stiles replied. If that was the case, Peter reckoned, either he had very little idea how much Peter could do in an hour with a police database or he had a secret and legendary sexual prowess. The idea that Stiles wouldn’t sing that from the mountaintops, though, was absurd.

Peter leaned against the counter, arms folded over his chest, and thought through the scenarios.

Best case:

  * He won a very lucrative favor

  * The demonic fortune-granting could be used to his own benefit with the onus of risk on Stiles

  * The pack found out after they had succeeded and looked favorably upon his actions




Worst:

  * He failed to fix the situation, leading to Stiles’s death, injury, or kidnapping by a demon, which the rest of the pack would inevitably find to be _his_ fault.

  * He ended up in the cross-hairs of a demon of unspecified power and ability




The latter part concerned him most. Demon issues didn’t typically plague the werewolf world – more the realm of druids and witches that might summon them. From what Peter did know, however, they were a bit hit or miss. Some relatively benign, others of near-apocalyptic power. Simply put, he didn’t have enough information to properly weigh his risks and benefits.

“A provisional arrangement,” Peter declared. The kettle had started to burble a bit louder. He turned to fetch some tea from the cabinet and prepare a cup. “I will help you with researching and determining the nature of this demon and the curse. Then, at _my_ discretion, we will proceed depending on the severity of the situation. If I think it’s relatively low risk, you and I will take care of it. If I decide it’s too dangerous...” Peter gave Stiles a pointed look over his shoulder, wanting to be sure that he imparted the seriousness of his words. “You _will_ have to tell the pack.”

Stiles’s brows furrowed, and he took a deep breath. “Okay, so – ”

Peter cut him off before he could get too far. “In _either case_ , I will get my time with that database.”

Stiles gave an incredulous scoff. The kettle whistled.

Lifting the kettle off the burner, Peter began to pour it over his tea leaves. “That’s the deal, Stiles. The only deal. Take it or leave it.”

“That’s stupid, Peter,” Stiles whined. “If you’re getting paid either way _and_ you get sole discretion on how serious it is, you’ll never decide to help me take care of it. You have no incentive.”

Rolling his eyes, Peter said, “Fine. If I help you dispatch the demon, I get that blowjob, too.” He set the kettle aside.

When he turned around to walk to the kitchen table with his tea, Stiles’s mouth was hanging open. “I can’t tell if you’re joking,” he said. “Are you joking?”

Peter didn’t deign to enlighten him.

* * *

  
  


The highest note on the piano gave a quiet _plink!_

“Don’t touch that,” Peter snapped.

“Do you even play piano?”

Peter glanced up at the upright piano tucked against the wall between his bookshelves. It was an antique, its dark wood carved elaborately with curling floral motifs. “No,” he lied, because he was fairly sure this was the answer that would annoy Stiles the most. “It’s just for decoration.” He looked back down at the book in front of him and was granted all of two more minutes of silence.

“You have a lot of records,” Stiles commented, and Peter didn’t need to look up to know that his restless fingers were walking across the tops of the record sleeves on the bookshelf, counting them out for no purpose but to keep moving.

Peter hummed, eyes fixed on a chart of runic scripts.

“Edwin Starr,” Stiles read. “I haven’t heard of him. Did he – ”

“You know, when we made this little arrangement,” Peter interrupted, “the agreement was that I would _help_ you figure out your demon problem. Not that I would do it for you while you snooped through my apartment.” He peeked up at Stiles and lifted an eyebrow.

They hadn’t gotten much research time in on the first day, Sunday. Peter did have a life, after all, and plans that he couldn’t drop on a moment’s notice just because Stiles had no self-control. That and he needed time to do some preliminary research so he could give the impression that he knew more than he really did. The next day, Stiles came to his apartment in the afternoon, directly from work.

Stiles set the record back down and darted back to his seat at the dining table. “Right.” He looked back down at his book and appeared to read for all of two minutes before his leg started to jiggle under the table. Then his fingers started drumming on the tabletop. He made a little clicking noise with his tongue. His drumming fingers inched forward across the surface of the table until they found a pen, and then Stiles began spinning it in circles.

Peter’s hand shot out and clamped down on top of Stiles’s and the pen. “ _Stiles_ ,” he growled, impatient. “Is there, perhaps, some sort of medication that you should have taken today?”

“I did!” Stiles insisted. He cringed. “It’s just worn off by this time. I take it before work.”

Perfect. Just perfect.

“So the only time I’ll get you while medicated is during the weekend?”

“I have to work this Saturday, too,” Stiles informed him sullenly.

“And I don’t suppose you have time off you could take for, say, releasing yourself from a demonic curse,” Peter grumbled, pulling his hand back.

“I _have_ PTO days,” Stiles explained. “But my boss is an asshole about using them. You have to request them, like, three weeks in advance and he throws a fit if you ask for more than two consecutive days.”

Peter frowned. “It’s your time off. It’s a company benefit, like pay. Who the hell is he to tell you how and when you can use it?”

“He’s the guy that can fire me,” Stiles reminded Peter. A fair point.

Not twenty minutes later, Stiles was standing at the record player again, setting the needle on his copy of _Four Tops_.

* * *

  
  


Peter got a bit side-tracked from the demon after that.

“Intelli-Facts Security Services, this is Stiles.”

“You’re criminally underpaid,” Peter said, eyes still fixed on his computer screen.

A shuffling noise came through the phone, and then Stiles’s voice, quieter, “Peter?”

“Honestly, forty-three thousand a year for the work you’re doing? In California?”

“Why do you _know_ that?” Stiles asked. “Why are you calling me at work?”

“You’re handling highly classified information on a daily basis, utilizing a specialized skill set. To not pay you a decent wage in the face of that is idiotic. It leaves the company wide open for bribery and internal data leaks. Did you know your boss makes almost one hundred thousand?”

“No, I – he _what_? And, again, why do _you_ know that?”

Peter hummed and hit send on an email. “And what’s truly scandalous is that, even at that pay rate, _he’s_ the one accepting bribes in exchange for falsified background checks.”

“Shit, fuck,” Stiles muttered. “Would you just...” The call dropped, but Peter didn’t put his phone down. No less than two minutes later, it rang with a call from Stiles’s cell phone.

“Peter Hale speaking,” he answered smoothly.

“What in the _fuck_ are you doing?” Stiles asked, voice hushed. “What’s this email you just sent me?”

Peter leaned back in his chair, smiling. “Evidence,” he answered. “You bring that to your boss’s boss – should probably loop HR in for good measure. Tell them you noticed that someone was hired even after you sent out a fairly damning background check. You did some snooping, using your _highly specialized_ investigative skills, and discovered the evidence in the attachment. Your boss has been accepting bribes in exchange for falsifying reports. One of those is for a government position – I believe that’s treason.”

Silence rang out over the line for a long moment. Finally, Stiles managed a stammering, “...why the hell…?”

“Upon seeing this, I expect that you will find yourself on an extended paid leave, pending the investigation, and will return with a salary much more reflective of your skills and effort. Hell, they might even give you his job. In the meantime, you will be able to give your full and undivided attention to our little project.”

“Did you seriously do all of this just to get research time while I’m medicated?” Stiles laughed. “Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. You’re ridiculous.”

Peter sniffed. “There was a little bit of righteous indignation in there somewhere, too.”

“Jesus,” Stiles breathed. “Okay. Um, thanks? Really. Thanks. I… I’m gonna go to HR I guess.”

“You had best,” Peter agreed.

* * *

  
  


They were really able to get to work then. The day after, Peter woke up to find Stiles already in his apartment, books sprawled across the dining room table. They figured out that some of the letters in the brand were similar to Amharic, but that might have been entirely coincidental. Others looked more like a Dravidian script. It didn’t make a lick of sense.

The second day, Stiles arrived while Peter was in the shower. He could hear footsteps approaching down the hallway as Stiles called, “Hey, I’m – oh, you just leave the door wide open, huh?”

“There _is_ a curtain,” Peter snorted. “You won’t see anything unless you stand around at the doorway.”

Stiles coughed and muttered something that Peter couldn’t quite hear over the sound of the water. Then, louder, he said, “Uh, I brought coffee. And bagels. So I’ll just get started, huh?”

Peter couldn’t resist the urge to mess with Stiles a little. “If that’s what you want to do,” he agreed with a pointedly inquisitive tone.

For a long moment, Stiles didn’t move or say anything. Peter imagined him stepping into the bathroom, awkward and babbling about how it _sounded_ like maybe Peter wanted him to join him in there, but if he was totally off-base, Peter should just say so. And, of course, he would say no such thing. Maybe he would push back the curtain, give Stiles a little show.

His gaze strayed downward as his cock showed a bit of interest at the fantasy, but he waited to see which way this would go.

Stiles walked away, back toward the dining room. Probably for the best.

* * *

  
  


That afternoon, Stiles stood in front of his record collection again.

“Tell me your medication hasn’t worn off already,” Peter sighed. He thought he had a pretty good match for one of the words in the brand. Something like ‘health,’ ‘vitality,’ or some derivative therein.

“No, I could just use a brain break,” Stiles told him, “and maybe some tunes while we work. Your music taste is super old, by the way. I get the vinyl thing, but you do know that modern artists put out records on vinyl, too, right?”

Peter sighed and pushed his book away. He could probably use a ‘brain break,’ too. “It’s a recreated collection,” he explained, not really sure why he was telling Stiles as much. “My mother had this massive record collection. I inherited it after she died, but it was destroyed in the fire. I’ve been rebuilding it.”

Stiles stared at him in surprise for a long moment, then looked down at the record in his hands. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry, do you – I mean, is it okay, me touching them and stuff?”

The question surprised him. People tended not to regard Peter with any manner of delicacy. “Don’t break any of them, and we’ll be fine,” he answered.

And so Stiles went on poking through until his eyes lit up. “Hey, I know this!” he declared. He brought the record over to the player. Moments later, a familiar trumpeting of brass rang out through the speakers.

“ _Calling out around the world,  
Are you ready for a brand new beat?  
Summer’s here and the time is right  
For dancin’ in the street.”_

Stiles’s hips swayed dramatically as he threw himself into some of the most ludicrous dancing Peter had ever been forced to witness. And that was before he snatched a candlestick off the bookshelf and began lip syncing into it like a microphone.

“I can’t believe you’re considered a full-grown adult these days,” Peter told him.

Stiles did a spin, then tipped back dramatically as he mouthed, “ _All we need is muuuuusic, sweet muuuusic_!”

Peter tried and failed to fight a smile off his face and looked back down at his books. Despite his best efforts, he found himself tapping his fingers and mouthing along with the words. It was, after all, a damn good song.

* * *

  
  


The next morning, Peter opened his eyes and saw Stiles lying beside him on his back, fully clothed with his jacket still on – shoes off – and staring at the ceiling with a melodramatic pensiveness.

“You’re going to tell me anyway, so just get it over with,” Peter grumbled at him, closing his eyes again. Maybe he’d get lucky and nod off in the middle of whatever drama Stiles had concocted.

“Do you think I should tell Scott about this anyway?” he asked. “I mean, Deaton will legit skin me alive over this stupid spell, but I feel guilty keeping it a secret from Scott.”

“So tell him,” Peter yawned.

“But what if he tells Deaton? And Deaton swears off teaching me stuff ever again because I have no regard for the sanctity of magic or the balance of the universe or my own personal safety, for that matter?”

Without opening his eyes, Peter mumbled, “You _don’t_ have any regard for the sanctity of magic or the balance of the universe or your own personal safety, for that matter.”

“And even if I get Scott to promise not to tell Deaton, he’s going to be, like, Mr. Concerned over it. He’s _always_ Mr. Concerned over the magic stuff. And him and Allison already have their hands full with Stella and the new baby coming. It’s the last thing he needs.”

“So don’t tell him,” Peter sighed.

“Am I a bad friend?” Stiles asked, and Peter could actually smell the anxiety.

“You’re an annoying friend,” he muttered.

“Wait, why am I – ?” There was a pause, then a shifting on the bed as Stiles came closer. When Peter finally opened his eyes, Stiles was hovering over him, an intense look on his face. “You think we’re friends?” he asked. “You and me?”

Peter realized, too late, what he had said. “No,” he snapped.

Delight broke out across Stiles’s expression. “You do!” he crowed. He poked Peter in the chest, then dropped onto him in a clumsy, rather uncomfortable hug. “You think we’re _bestest_ friends.”

“You’re a home invasion that’s gotten wildly out of control,” Peter said.

“That’s how the bestest friendships start,” Stiles informed him.

God, when was the last time someone had the audacity to _hug_ Peter? Outside of a few hookups here and there, it had been quite a long while. The proximity and warmth of Stiles was definitely sending Peter’s body some interesting signals. “Crawling into a man’s bed first thing in the morning and throwing yourself on top of him does generally lead to things, but ‘bestest friendship’ is not what comes to mind.”

Stiles’s thigh shifted just slightly, just enough for him to realize that Peter was half-hard under the blankets. He lifted up onto his forearms, face flushing.

“Good morning,” Peter said rather pointedly. Lest Stiles get ideas that this was about him in particular and not about a perfectly natural waking condition.

Stiles went even redder. “Heh,” he said. “Sorry.” He backed off to sit on the other side of the bed. “I should… make coffee?”

“A wonderful idea,” Peter agreed.

* * *

  
  


The script stared up at him from his laptop screen, a picture of condemnation. ‘Like a rock’ one translation offered. ‘Immovable’ was another. Paired with the word ‘vitality,’ Peter could only assume they were dealing with an immortal, perhaps impervious being.

It could be bluster, of course. The demon itself had written the brand, so who was to say it wasn’t just puffing itself up? And anyway, the scripts didn’t match exactly. Peter still hadn’t been able to find any one script that _did_ match this one exactly, and the picture of Stiles’s arm on his screen was difficult to work off, what with the way the letters disappeared around to the other side.

“Let me see your arm again,” Peter sighed.

Stiles set his arm in Peter’s waiting hand but didn’t move closer, so Peter hand to yank him around to the chair next to his by force.

“Ow,” Stiles complained.

Peter ignored him, shoving up the sleeve of his hoodie and pulling the mark close to his face. He squinted at it.. He looked back at the picture on his computer screen. He looked at the arm. He looked at the screen again.

“Oh, fuck,” Peter snapped.

“What?”

“They’ve changed.” He pulled Stiles’s arm next to the computer screen. “The marks on your arm are different than they were when we took this picture. Look at that – it’s not even the same alphabet.”

Stiles snatched his arm back, inspecting it just a few inches from his own nose. “What the shit?”

Either this demon was intentionally fucking with them – a definite possibility – or something had changed about the spell or the nature of the wish.

Peter froze. Slowly, he turned to stare at Stiles. He’d wished to get his boss fired. For a promotion.

“Oh, fuck,” Peter said again.

Because if he knew anything about demons, it was that them pulling through on their end of a bargain was _not_ a good thing when you wanted to reverse the deal altogether. He was loathe to admit that a situation was beyond his capabilities, but this was the sort of issue that really _should_ be taken to Deaton and the rest of the pack.

Peter was about to say as much when Stiles stared him down with wide, pleading eyes and said, “But… I mean, we – you can figure it out, right?”

He absolutely could not let Stiles go around thinking that Bambi eyes would get him what he wanted, even if that was the case in this instance, so Peter only said, “I want two hours with the database.”

“Done,” Stiles agreed. “Totally. Two hours. Deal.”

At some point, someone who wasn’t Peter needed to have a talk with Stiles about making deals with devils.

* * *

  
  


Peter could practically feel it in the air when Stiles’s medication wore off that evening. He’d been doing his best to ignore him while he wandered the apartment like a Roomba. However, Peter could hear Stiles getting close to the piano again, his footsteps causing the strings to vibrate ever-so-slightly.

“Don’t touch it,” he said preemptively.

“I can’t believe you have a whole piano just to be pretentious,” Stiles muttered.

Sighing, Peter snapped a book shut and rubbed at his eyes. He’d been at this too long, already hating himself for promising that he could figure this out. “If you must know, I do play,” he admitted. He wasn’t really sure why he said it. Maybe just to shut Stiles up about it. “Not as well as I used to before the coma, but I’m getting back into it.”

“Play something,” Stiles said, and when Peter glared at him for the order, his expression went from curious to faux-sweetness and faux-innocence. “Please?”

Peter considered just telling Stiles to go home, get out of his hair. Then he got up and walked to the piano, pulling some sheet music out of the storage bench before he sat. He had been working on a Chopin nocturne, so that was on top. He made a fumbling start before getting his head into the key properly, and from there it was mostly muscle memory for the first portion, his fingers gliding through the motions.

Before long, he felt Stiles slide onto the bench next to him, just far enough that he didn’t impede the movement of Peter’s right arm. “You were even better before?” he asked.

“Is that your way of telling me I’m good?”

“You are,” Stiles agreed.

He sat and listened quietly until Peter had to tell him, “Flip the page.”

Stiles flipped it. “My only attempt at music was in fourth grade when I tried to take up the cello,” he said. “I got sick of lugging it to school after, like, two months.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Peter’s lips at the mental image. “You should have seen me hauling a whole piano to school and back,” he replied.

A short, surprised laugh leapt from Stiles’s mouth. “Through the snow, uphill both ways?”

“Obviously.”

Peter could feel Stiles looking at him, his gaze intense and heart rate climbing just a little too high for casual conversation. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a tongue dart out over pink lips, then a flash of white teeth biting down on the lower lip. He smelled like arousal.

He fumbled the next section, but recovered. “You’re distracting me,” he accused.

“Oh yeah?” Stiles’s voice came out too soft, breathy.

Peter refused to act flustered about whatever this little flirtation was. Stiles was attractive, despite his thoroughly obnoxious personality. And, to his own surprise, Peter had found he had actually enjoyed the past few days with him. He wasn’t about to waste time pretending he couldn’t see where this was headed. “If you’re wondering if I can play while you touch me...” Peter waited until an easier part that he had memorized and glanced over at Stiles’s face just in time to catch him flushing. Peter winked at him. “I’m not that good.”

Stiles kissed him. No uncertainty, no hesitation. He just planted his lips on Peter’s, hands coming up to hold his face as Peter’s fell away from the piano keys. It felt like a very sure thing, lips opening at once, a tongue darting out to meet his like it knew exactly what it wanted, where, and when.

It was that confidence that had Peter pulling back a hair, studying Stiles’s hungry expression with curiosity. “Where are you going with this?” he asked.

Stiles glanced past him. “I was thinking the couch.”

He laughed, pleasantly surprised at the bravado. Peter thought about making a comment, on how Stiles felt comfortable climbing into his bed first thing in the morning, but he wanted to fuck on the couch. Going to bed felt more serious, though. This didn’t feel so serious.

Peter stood, tugging Stiles toward the sitting area. Their lips met again before they reached it, Stiles’s hands sliding over Peter’s waist, hiking his shirt up to scratch short fingernails over his sides. It wasn’t often that he let someone else take the reins when it came to sex, and he didn’t know how he felt about giving Stiles the idea that he did. Maybe another time, he thought (and, fuck, why was he already thinking about there being another time?), but not to start.

He caught Stiles’s wrists and pushed them back so he could hold them, one-handed, at his lower back. The other slipped up to his throat. Not to squeeze, just to hold. “You’re so sure of yourself,” Peter growled. “Come on, tell me what it is you want.”

It could have been the hand on his throat or the tone of Peter’s words, but something had sent a shiver through Stiles, his clothed erection stuttering forward against Peter’s hip. He stank of lust. “I want you to put me on my knees,” Stiles said. “I want to taste you.”

And, god, didn’t that sound perfect? Peter smirked, tightening his hold just slightly, just enough to feel Stiles thrust against him again. “Here you were going to let me think that would be some sort of payment _,_ ” he teased. “When you are so clearly _gagging_ for it.” He moved his hand up, dragging a thumb over Stiles’s lower lip.

Stiles’s laugh was soft and breathless. “Shut up,” he muttered, leaning forward for another kiss.

Peter pulled back at the last second, denying him. He squinted playfully. “Admit it: you made up this whole demon thing just for an excuse to suck me off.”

“You caught me,” Stiles snorted. “Now, would you just...” He leaned in again, and this time Peter let him, meeting his lips with a bit more teeth than before.

Releasing Stiles’s hands, he instead busied his own, doing away with Stiles’s hoodie. The body underneath, Peter knew, was sturdy and lean, well-built from over a decade running with wolves but which would never be quite strong enough to keep up with them. It was why he threw himself into the magic so blindly, Peter thought. Ten years, and he still agonized over feeling like a sidekick, and a useless one at that.

He wondered, as Stiles urged him back onto the couch and crawled into his lap, sucking on Peter’s tongue and stroking a hand over his chest, if his over-eager approach to sex was yet another way he compensated for those insecurities. _Want me – want me because I’ll do all the work, do anything you want, make it good for you_.

Peter flipped Stiles onto his back. He hit the couch with a satisfying thump. He looked vaguely stunned for the three seconds it took before Peter was kissing him, pressing him down into the cushions. He shoved Stiles’s shirt up to his armpits. He leaned down to drag his lips over Stiles’s chest, tasting soft pink nipples and drinking in the little gasps of pleasure and surprise that followed. His mouth trailed down over the firm but undefined plane of Stiles’s stomach, pausing to nip at the tip of his happy trail, just under his navel.

“I can’t help but notice,” Stiles whimpered, “that I’m not on my knees.”

Peter hummed.

“Oh my god, you’re such a fucking control freak,” Stiles said, choking around a laugh. “I tell you what I want, and just to be contrary you – ”

A sharp bite to Stiles’s belly shut him up. “You told me what you want,” Peter agreed. “Now shut up, be good, and we’ll see if you deserve it.”

Giving pleasure, Peter felt fairly certain, was easy for Stiles. It made him feel not only in control but also useful. Necessary. Like he was earning his place. By the same logic, he supposed that lying there and taking it was going to be somewhat of a challenge for him. Peter did so love to challenge people.

He sat back so he could get a proper view as he opened Stiles’s fly and tugged his pants and boxers down. Stiles made quite the sight: spread out long across the couch, bare only from his armpits to the tops of his thighs. His cock was mostly hard, lying heavy against his belly, curved to the right. He was cut, long but a bit on the thin side and flushed a pretty pink from the tip down to his balls. Peter cupped those in one hand, rubbing them gently as he trailed the thumb of his other hand up the underside of Stiles’s cock.

Giving a noisy gasp, Stiles started to reach for him.

Peter caught his wrists and leaned forward, pinning them to the couch on either side of Stiles’s head. He leaned his full weight onto them and kissed him.

Stiles whined against his lips.

“I said be good,” Peter reminded him.

“Fucking control freak,” Stiles mumbled, then sucked on Peter’s lower lip.

“Do you want me to stop?” Peter asked – an honest question, even if he felt fairly sure that he knew the answer. He wouldn’t assume.

“No.” The admission came out quietly, and when Peter pulled back again, Stiles’s cheeks were stained pink. He kept his hands where Peter had put them. He continued to be good while Peter dragged his tongue up his cock, while Peter sucked on his balls and then tasted the beads of precome on the head of his dick. He was good for all of twenty seconds once Peter got his mouth around him, providing light suction as he bobbed his head lower.

Then hands were pushing into his hair, just stroking through without pushing. Peter didn’t bother to pull back and reprimand him. It felt nice. If anything, he rewarded Stiles by sinking lower still, until his throat fluttered around the head, then pulling back to bob a little faster.

“Oh fuck, oh Jesus, Peter,” Stiles moaned, squirming under his grip. His legs, which had been splayed wide around Peter, started to pull up and in by reflex, which had the jeans creeping back up.

Peter yanked them all the way down to his knees, effectively pinning them beneath his own body weight. Stiles whined loudly and tugged on his hair.

“Please,” Stiles gasped. “Please, I want – ”

From the wriggling of his legs, Peter knew damn well what he wanted. He wanted to wrap his legs around Peter’s head and suffocate him on his dick. Peter let himself choke on it audibly, just to tease.

“ _Fuck!_ ” He heard Stiles’s head thump back against the couch. “Oh, god. Peter, I’m – ”

Peter pulled off and looked up at Stiles. His eyes tracked from the quivering muscles in his stomach to the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the restless bob of his Adam’s apple. Stiles’s mouth hung open, eyes squeezed shut, then blinking open when Peter’s mouth didn’t return to his cock. He looked down at Peter, silently pleading for more.

“There, you’re being so good,” Peter purred, stroking his hands over Stiles’s thighs. “I’ll let you decide. Do you want me to make you come now? Or do you want to suck me off first? On your knees, like you said you wanted.”

It was too delicious, watching the conflict skating across Stiles’s face. His desperation and want battled against that need to feel in control, to feel like he was _doing_ something. Then, just as quickly, suspicion took hold. “Are you just gonna do the opposite of whatever I say?” he asked, accusatory.

Peter laughed at that. He pressed a kiss to the base of Stiles’s cock. “No. You can have whatever you want, honey.” The pet name slipped out carelessly. Peter would examine that later, if he remembered.

“I… I want you to suck you off,” Stiles decided, though it looked near painful for him to say it. Ah, well. Peter had already conceded to thoughts of ‘next time.’ Maybe next time he would tie Stiles down and teach him the art of receiving pleasure. In the meantime, he was damn well going to enjoy the offer given him.

Sitting up, Peter settled himself onto the couch cushions. He tugged his shirt off over his head and draped it over the back of the couch while Stiles wormed the rest of the way out of his own clothes. Stiles settled, naked, onto the floor between Peter’s feet.

There had been a bit of a joke among the pack: Stiles’s ‘slutty phase’ in college. Stiles had adamantly referred to it as his ‘bisexual awakening,’ and Lydia had insisted it was more of a ‘big ho awakening,’ and they had all teased about it for a couple of years before Stiles got the adventurousness out of his system and they sort of forgot about it.

Peter found himself remembering it very suddenly as Stiles dove in to lick and suck at his balls, moaning obscenely as his lips dragged up the length of his cock, then wrapped around him, hot and tight. His tongue flicked quickly and expertly around the head, teasing at his foreskin like he’d had plenty of practice with that, too. And, seemingly just as easily, he was sinking down low, taking all of him with little more than a soft gulping noise.

It all happened so quickly, took him so by surprise, that Peter had little time or mental capacity to do more than gasp and pant and cling to Stiles’s shoulders while he watched. Stiles pulled back to work at the head with his tongue, then sank low again, started up a pattern with it. Clever fingers slid over the insides of Peter’s thighs, stroking over his balls and then up to his perineum, pressing purposefully, just shy of his hole in a way that had Peter’s toes curling.

So, overall, big kudos to the bisexual awakening, Peter thought.

He realized, belatedly as he leaned back and rolled his hips between the suction of Stiles’s soft mouth and the expert teasing of his finger, that Stiles’s other hand was wrapped around his own cock, arm jerking more and more quickly as the sound of flesh on flesh competed with the spit-slick sounds of the blow job. Peter stroked a hand through Stiles’s hair, then slid it down to the tense line of his jaw. “God, you look so good like this,” he praised. “You like that? Like choking on my cock?”

Stiles’s heavy-lidded eyes met his as he moaned around Peter’s dick.

“Are you close?” Peter asked, and he got only the slightest twitch of Stiles’s head as an affirmative. The next time Stiles sank low on his cock, Peter tangled his fingers into Stiles’s hair and held him there. It wasn’t so firm a hold that Stiles couldn’t push back if he wanted to, but Peter had seen the look on his face when that hand had been wrapped around his throat. He had a hunch about this. Sure enough, Stiles made a nearly wounded noise of pleasure when he realized what Peter was doing, cutting off his air. “Come for me, Stiles. I want you to come with me stuffed down your throat.”

He saw it in the flutter of Stiles’s eyelids, the curl of his shoulders as he went taut and shivered, arm still jerking in frantic motions as he stroked himself off. Peter released his hold, and Stiles pulled off at once, pressing his face against the crease of Peter’s hip as he panted and moaned and stroked himself through his orgasm. “Fuck… fuck...” Stiles gasped.

The second he seemed to have recovered, he was reaching for Peter’s cock again, stroking it and pressing his lips to it. “Fuck my face,” he rasped. “Fuck, I want you to.”

Peter wasn’t about to turn that down. He guided himself back into that warm, inviting mouth. Holding Stiles’s head in both hands, he pulled him up and down the length. He probably wasn’t as rough or demanding as Stiles had meant for him to be or as he had expected. His movements were slow, hips rolling with the movement. Between the suction and the sight of Stiles’s swollen pink lips wrapped around him, it didn’t take long before Peter tipped over the edge with a growled, “ _Fuck,_ Stiles.”

Stiles crawled back onto the couch afterward, flopping face-first onto the leather with his lower half strewn across Peter’s lap. It wasn’t the most dignified pose, but he didn’t seem to care. Peter didn’t mind the view, anyway, and stroked a hand over the round curve of Stiles’s ass, affectionate.

“That was...” Peter began, searching for the right word.

“Totally worth an hour with a police database?” Stiles offered, speaking directly into the couch.

Peter snorted. “Don’t brag about your sexual prowess, Stiles. It’s tacky.”

“ _You’re_ tacky.”

Peter pinched his butt.

They lounged there in comfortable silence for several minutes. Peter started to think about how he could kick Stiles out without endangering the possibility of future sex. Then, unprompted, Stiles sighed, rolled over, and said, “I should get going.”

“Oh?” Peter said. It wasn’t like he wanted to discourage him, but he honestly hadn’t expected Stiles to throw himself out. Mr. Respectful Boundaries he was not.

“I don’t have my meds here, and I’m guessing you stay up later than I do. Either that or you get, like, ten hours of sleep a night.”

“I’m a night owl,” Peter conceded.

“I would be, but work has me programmed to get up at the asscrack of dawn,” Stiles griped. He sat up and started fishing around for his clothes.

It seemed too easy, too casual. Then again, Peter remembered, Stiles _had_ said something about struggling to find partners that weren’t ‘looking to get married right away.’

Peter froze.

Shit. Shit, what was it Stiles had said about the spell he’d done? He wanted to improve his business prospects, get his boss fired, move out of his apartment, and find a romantic prospect that fit his parameters. They had already knocked off the first two. No, Peter could _not_ let himself fill in the last request or they were _fucked_.

Stiles must have misinterpreted the muted panic on his face. “Are we good?” he asked as he buttoned his pants. “I just… I mean, I figured you wouldn’t want me to stay.”

“I don’t,” Peter said quickly, shoving his concerns down. He focused on the issue at hand. “I’m fairly certain you’ll be barging in to wake me up in the morning anyway. I don’t need your snoring to wake me up all night, too.”

“Right. Well… I’ll see you tomorrow.” Stiles gave him an awkward little salute, which he seemed to immediately regret if the look on his face was anything to go by. And then he left.

One thing was very clear in Peter’s mind: Stiles absolutely had to stay in his shit-hole apartment.

* * *

  
  


“What in the fuck is that?” Peter asked.

The second he had stepped out of his bedroom that morning, his eyes fixed on a large, bright red suitcase sitting next to the kitchen table. Stiles looked up from his laptop, following Peter’s gaze. “Oh. Jesus, you wouldn’t believe,” he griped. Upon closer inspection, there were dark circles under his eyes, and he reeked of caffeine. “A pipe burst in the unit above mine this morning. My whole apartment is a fucking lake. Everything in my closet is soaked. My mattress is ruined. Thankfully, I left my laptop in the living room last night.”

No. No, no, no, no, _no_.

“You can’t stay here,” Peter snapped.

Stiles frowned at him, brow furrowing. “Uh… wasn’t planning on it,” he said slowly. “I came straight here this morning, but the landlord is putting me up in a hotel.”

This was an absolute disaster. Peter went to the kitchen and poured himself a very large cup of coffee.

When he returned to the table, Stiles was still staring at him, drumming his fingers restlessly on the table. “Hey, um, if you’re feeling weird about yesterday...” he began.

“I’m not,” Peter assured him.

“I mean, I’m not expecting anything, seriously,” Stiles went on. “It was fun. I had a good time. But I know we’re not, like...”

Peter lifted an eyebrow at him. “Bestest friends?” he offered.

That seemed to crack the tension in the room. Stiles snorted and ducked his head. “Asshole,” he muttered, looking at his screen. He let Peter get halfway through his coffee before he said, “So I think I found something on the spell that I did.”

Stiles spun the laptop around so Peter could see it. On the screen was a scan of an old text in an old Germanic language with translation notes off to the side.

“It’s a story about a man who used it after being hit with a curse that caused _mis_ fortune,” Stiles explained. “So he tried to use this prosperity spell to counteract it. Basically, at first it seemed like it didn’t work at all. Then a string of bad luck leads to him being cast out of his village. On the way out of town, his horse comes untied from a post – classic misfortune curse, right? So he goes into the woods looking for his horse and instead he finds a lost child. He picks up the child and carries him to the next village over. And what does he find? The child is the son of the witch that cursed him in the first place. She’s so grateful, she lifts the curse.”

Peter squints at the screen, then up at Stiles. “So you’re saying that the spell itself might have worked, but it worked by binding a demon to you?” he supposed.

Stiles nodded. “Right. It can work in unpredictable, really roundabout ways. I mean, there’s other stories about people wishing for one thing and getting it, but at the expense of other things. It doesn’t seem to be a _strictly_ monkey paw sort of spell, but I guess it _can_ play out that way.”

“So when you wished for too much all at once,” Peter summarized, “the best way it could come up with to accomplish all of that was to strike a deal with a demon for you.”

“Basically.”

This could be good. This could be very good. Peter hummed. “Theoretically, if it’s the spell that bound the demon to you and not your reckless wishing, simply breaking the spell _could_ unbind you. We wouldn’t even have to worry about the demon.” Of course, if that was true, it would mean that the bits of prosperity Stiles had managed so far might come undone also. If they stayed, then it was unlikely that the binding would be undone by breaking the spell. Either the effects could be turned back or not. Regardless, landing Stiles back where he had been with work was definitely preferable to leaving him bound to a demon. As for him and Peter? Well, if they decided to pursue something, he would feel a whole lot better doing it without the influence of a demon hanging over them.

“Let’s figure out how to break this spell, then,” Peter decided.

* * *

  
  


Researching the spell was much less frustrating than what they had been slogging through before. By noon that day, they had collected a decent stock of information on counteracting the effects of these sorts of spells. Some of the ingredients had archaic names, which needed further investigation, but Peter expected they would be done with all of this in a day, easily.

Peter was surprised to find that the prospect wasn’t entirely welcome.

“God, I’m going cross-eyed,” Stiles complained, pushing back from the table. He made a bee-line for the records and started flipping through.

“I do have Spotify on my computer, if you want,” Peter offered.

Stiles shook his head. “Nah. I like the records.” He pulled one out, hummed in approval, and then set it delicately in the player.

Peter recognized the dramatic piano immediately. Carole King. Stiles started his ridiculous dancing as she sang,

“ _I feel the earth move under my feet  
I feel the sky tumbling down  
I feel my heart start to trembling  
Whenever you’re around”_

Smiling, he rose from his seat and headed to the kitchen for a refill on his coffee. “Do you know this album?” he asked curiously.

“Yeah,” Stiles agreed, his hips wiggling absurdly as he shimmied around in a circle. “My mom used to listen to this one all the time when I was a kid.”

They settled in to work again, though they were both tapping their fingers, occasionally murmuring along with the lyrics. When “Beautiful” came on, though, Stiles leaned all the way back in his chair and crowed, a little off-key, “You got to get up every morning! With a smiiiiile on your face and show the world aaaaalll the love in your heart!”

Peter dissolved into laughter, covering his face with his hands. “Please don’t quit your day job,” he advised.

Stiles got up again, grabbing Peter’s arm on his way. “Come on, dance with me!”

“Are you serious?” Peter got up, though, following him away from the table.

“Of course I’m serious. This song _rules_.”

He was only moderately less ridiculous when dancing with a partner, legs still an uncoordinated chaos while his hands settled more sedately onto Peter’s shoulders. After the second time an errant foot collided with Peter’s ankle, he decided to get the situation under control by yanking Stiles in closer, so their chests were pressed together. He kept his hands on Stiles’s hips, holding him steady.

Stiles licked his lips and glanced down at Peter’s mouth.

Peter knew they shouldn’t be doing this. Stiles was already on his way out of his apartment. He could easily get out of his lease with the damage that had been done. This was, theoretically, the final piece of his reckless wish.

Stiles’s arms wrapped around Peter’s neck, pulling him closer.

There was also, of course, the possibility that the demon was manipulating him into this behavior. Maybe that was why the spell had to use a demon to make things happen. A spell of that sort wasn’t, on its own, powerful enough to exert any sort of mind control, but a demon certainly could. Maybe it was urging Stiles into his arms when he never would have on his own.

The song changed, now slower, warmer.

“ _Way over yonder  
Is a place that I know  
Where I can find shelter  
From a hunger and cold_”

Peter started the kiss this time, melting against Stiles’s lips, too soft and too sweet. Stiles’s hands slid into his hair, scratching at his scalp as they swayed to the music. Peter’s hands slipped lower, cupping Stiles’s ass, and it felt effortless, inevitable, that Stiles should jump up and wrap his legs around Peter’s waist.

He didn’t let himself think or doubt again. He wanted this too much and, at the end of the day, Peter was a very selfish man. His bedroom was only a handful of steps down the hall, and it felt like no time at all before he had Stiles pressed into the sheets, clothes coming off between breathless, obsessive kisses.

Stiles kissed at Peter’s bared chest, fingers splayed wide over his ribs. “I want,” he gasped.

“What do you want?” Peter growled, rocking their hips together.

Leaning up for another kiss, Stiles moaned against his lips. “I want you to fuck me.”

Peter got his fingers in the waistband of Stiles’s jeans and boxers, yanking them down with one sharp motion. Then he left Stiles to get them off the rest of the way as he knelt up and reached for the drawer of his nightstand for lube and a condom. When he turned back, Stiles was on his hands and knees on the bed, back arched and face turned away. Peter could hear his heart thundering, could just make out a flush on the tips of his ears. He slipped his hands over the curve of Stiles’s ass, leaned over to press his lips to his spine in the middle of his back.

Out in the living room, the song was still playing,

“ _Maybe tomorrow  
I’ll find my way  
To the land where the honey runs  
In rivers each day.”_

“God, you’re beautiful,” Peter murmured against his skin. He kissed again, once at each dimple in his lower back. He couldn’t help but notice how receptive Stiles was, compared to the night before. Like maybe he’d gotten the insecurity out of his system, maybe he’d settled himself and realized that, yes, Peter really did want him.

At least he hoped that was why.

“But I want you on your back,” Peter added, not entirely sure why. Maybe it was the reassurance of identity, that Stiles was looking him in the eye and saying that he wanted him. Maybe he just wanted to see the look on his face when he pressed inside.

Stiles glanced back at him, looking faintly surprised, but he rolled over, splaying his legs on either side of Peter’s knees. He reached down to pull his half-hard cock up against his belly. “Anyone ever tell you you’re kind of bossy in bed?”

“Hold your knees up,” Peter bossed, and Stiles did.

Peter drizzled the lube directly over Stiles’s hole, smirking when he hissed at the cold. One of Stiles’s heels knocked into Peter’s shoulder, and he muttered, “Jerk.”

Peter dragged his thumb over Stiles’s hole, pressing and teasing at it. The song ended, the last one on that side of the album, and the apartment was suddenly terribly quiet. All he could hear was the steady thump of Stiles’s heart and a shuddering little intake of breath as the tip of his thumb teased inside. Peter wrapped his other hand around Stiles’s cock, stroking him as he pressed it in the rest of the way. It went fairly easily, stealing a noisy gasp from Stiles’s lips. Then a groan.

Then, “ _Peter._ ”

“Mm, what’s that?” he murmured. He let go of Stiles’s cock and swapped his thumb out for his middle finger, thinner but longer, and stroked slowly. Once he found Stiles’s sweet spot, caught the sharp whimper and the curl of toes that resulted, he deliberately avoided it.

“Peter, _please_.” Any obedience that might have been inferred by the exclamation was immediately undercut as Stiles’s heel knocked against his shoulder again.

Peter scowled at him. “I’m not a horse. You don’t kick me to make me go.”

The other heel knocked his other shoulder. “Giddy up,” Stiles urged.

Despite a valiant attempt to look annoyed, Peter laughed, added some lube, and pressed a second finger into him. Stiles took it with a satisfied hiss, biting down on his lower lip.

“You don’t have to use one,” he said.

Peter had to look up from the clench of his hole around Peter’s fingers, to see what he was talking about. Stiles was looking at the condom, sitting on the bed beside him.

“I know you can’t carry anything, so...”

He knew that. Peter knew he knew that. He kept condoms around because most humans he slept with didn’t know that, and because some people wouldn’t care for the mess anyway. He hadn’t wanted to assume. He pressed his fingers in deeper, curling them to stroke over Stiles’s prostate. “You’re not worried you’ll run into someone from the pack?” he asked.

Stiles’s eyes had fallen shut with a moan. “What?” he mumbled.

“They’d smell me on you,” Peter reminded him. “You’re not worried about that?” He had mostly meant to tease, but he found he was honestly curious.

“Mmm,” Stiles murmured, still distracted by the slow thrust of Peter’s fingers. “Did you think you were gonna be my secret shame booty call or something? Oh, _fuck_.” Peter had slipped in a third finger. “No, you – no one’s gonna care,” Stiles went on, sounding more than a little distracted. “You lost your evil boogeyman cred a long time ago. Now would you just – fuck, Peter, you need to _fuck me_.”

And Peter was only a man, after all. If Stiles ended up regretting letting the others find out, if he regretted fucking Peter in the first place – all of those could be dealt with later when Stiles wasn’t fucking _writhing_ on his bed, reaching for him, clenching around his fingers and hissing, “ _Please_.”

Peter got up to kick off his pants, which had been hanging open since they first fell into bed, then climbed back over Stiles. He slicked himself up.

Stiles held his gaze as he pressed inside, his expression hungry and yet so thoroughly relaxed that Peter thought he must be telling the truth about him losing his ‘boogeyman cred.’ At what point had Stiles learned to feel so safe with him? At what point had Peter let him? Long legs wrapped tightly around his waist, heels digging into his ass and urging him forward, deeper, closer.

“Fuck,” Stiles breathed. “Fuck, it’s good. It’s so good, Peter. You feel – ”

“Good?” Peter suggested with breathless amusement.

Stiles’s head fell back against the bed, baring his long, pale throat. “Fuck you,” he snickered. “I’m not my most eloquent when I’m full of cock. Sue me.”

Peter pulled back and rocked forward slowly, watching intently as the sensations played out on Stiles’s face. Pleasure and fullness and just enough discomfort to set his nerves on high alert. A cringe, but he grinned through it and moaned.

He should have fucked Stiles roughly. He should have pinned him down and thrust hard and fast. Stiles would have loved it, Peter was sure. The bow of his body practically begged to be manhandled, tested. Stiles would have shouted his name and it would all be over quickly, leaving them breathless and sated and moments from rolling apart and getting back to business.

But he went slow instead. His thrusts were firm and deep, carefully angled to wring the lowest, longest groans from Stiles’s chest. He held Stiles’s body close against his, a hand at his lower back so he could feel the shivers that raced up his spin when he hit the spot just right. Stiles didn’t seem any more willing to leave distance between them, wrapping his arms around Peter’s shoulders, clinging to him, kissing at his shoulders and neck, then licking into his mouth to share breaths around moans. It was brutally sweet. Agonizingly patient. Peter’s body was screaming at him for more, but he fought every impulse. Instead, he did everything he could to drag the moment out longer until he had no idea how long they had been tangled up together, no idea whose sweat was sticking to his chest or which one of them was trembling so violently with pleasure and exertion.

Eternities later, it was Stiles who finally broke, gasping out, “Oh, I can’t. I need to – ” and slipping a hand between them to jerk himself in long, firm strokes.

Peter’s arms and thighs were trembling. He’d been holding back for so long. Finally, he caved to his instincts and let his hips snap a little harder, the motion driving Stiles up the bed bit by bit. “Yes,” he panted. “I want you to. I want you to come for me.”

The groan that tore itself from Stiles’s mouth as he came was so low, it was practically a growl. His eyes held steady on Peter’s, sure and intense, as Peter gasped out his name and came inside of him.

His muscles finally gave out on him, and Peter let himself fall onto Stiles’s chest, breathing in the heavy, musky scent of sweat and sex. A soft touch trailed down the back of his neck. Petting him. “Am I crushing you?” Peter asked, maybe after too long a wait.

“No,” Stiles said. “I like it.”

He enjoyed long moments of satisfaction before the edges of guilt started to creep in. Because that wasn’t what he had intended to do. He hadn’t intended to have sex with Stiles again at all, but he had _especially_ not intended to fuck him like _that_ . That was a fuck that went places. Where it went, he wasn’t quite sure, but it went _somewhere_.

Stiles would get out of his lease. He’d fixed his situation at his job. And now he had a romantic prospect who wasn’t looking to get married tomorrow, but who definitely wasn’t afraid of making this into something more. All of his wishes, granted.

They were fucked.

Reluctantly, Peter turned his head to the side to look at Stiles’s arm. It was bare. He frowned, then turned to look at the other. Also bare.

He sat up, letting himself slip free of Stiles a little too quickly. Stiles hissed and said, “Hey, what’s – ” but Peter was scanning his body with eyes and fingers, turning his arms this way and that, then his legs.

“What the fuck?” Stiles asked.

“The brand is gone,” Peter told him. His pulse had only just settled, but it was up again as realization set in.

Of course. There had never been a demon. The spell had created a false brand to get Stiles here, to guide him into the solutions for his wishes. To Peter. He sat back on his heels.

Stiles pushed himself up to sitting, crossing his legs as he inspected his own arm. “What does that mean? Did the spell break? Did the demon give up on me? Are we… I mean, is it over?”

The question hit Peter uncomfortably. He was pretty sure Stiles had almost asked, _Are we done_ ? Because, of course, that was the whole reason he and Stiles had been spending time together at all. And it wasn’t like Stiles had asked for a _boyfriend_ or anything as absurd as that – just a prospect. That’s all that Peter needed to be for him. He swallowed heavily. “I guess so,” he agreed.

They sat silently for a long moment, Stiles chewing on his lip as he stared at his empty arm. Slowly, he looked up at Peter. “I mean… it’s kind of suspicious, isn’t it?” he said.

“What?”

“The brand,” he said. “That it just left like that? It’s… I mean, there could still be a problem. A demonic sort of problem.” He shifted up to sit on his knees, facing Peter. His tone picked up a hyperactive sort of passion. “And you promised you would help me with my demonic problem. Don’t think you’re off the hook, buster, just because the letters went away. No way, no how.” He wagged a finger at Peter. “If you want _any_ chance at that police database, we’re going to keep at it until we know for _sure_ that this is over. Got it?”

Peter searched Stiles’s expression. There, under the stern, scolding look, there was a pleading uncertainty. Want.

A smile fought its way onto Peter’s lips, and he didn’t stifle it quite quick enough. “Well,” he mused. “I _do_ want that database. And I guess a deal’s a deal.” He lifted an eyebrow at Stiles. “Should we get back to work then?”

Stiles looked toward the bedroom door, then back at the bed. He laid back down. He folded his arms behind his head and fixed Peter with a positively lecherous look. “Yeah. Let’s get back to work.”

**Author's Note:**

> I love, love, love comments! You can also find me on tumblr at luulapants.tumblr.com.


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